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REAC puts water quality concerns to the test
Patrick Keller
Lakeside Leader
In the case of water quality testing, no news is good news. At least that’s the thinking for some members of the Regional Environmental Action Committee, as they wrap up a year’s worth of ‘baseline water tests’ along Lesser Slave Lake’s south shore.
Test results should be returned within a few weeks, and the group is hoping for low scores.
On Sept. 19, The Leader followed along on the rounds of REAC member and long-time environmental steward Jule Asterisk, as she collected water samples from several spots along the south shore of Lesser Slave Lake and the creeks and rivers that empty into it.
“This is the sixth round of tests,” explained Asterisk. REAC began testing last spring, after receiving a grant from the Alberta Stewardship Network.
On this day, members will collect samples from Old Man Creek, a beaver pond, two control sites and an anomaly that appeared two weeks back: an electric blue substance floating on the surface and clinging to logs near what was once a boat launch.
The first stop of the day takes us to Faust, Alberta, and the home of REAC member Alenda Shafer. Shafer’s 25-acre homestead shares a border with what was once a booming business in the small town: a pole treatment plant used to infuse a combination of chemicals, including arsenic, into telephone and power poles, through a process known as osmosis. An explosion at the plant in the 1960’s leveled the facility, and showered the hamlet with dust containing arsenic and other deadly chemicals.
“We spoke with a man who was living here at the time of the explosion,” said Shafer.
“He reported seeing 45 gallon barrels shoot 50 feet into the air. In the explosion, bright, red clouds could be seen. After that, it rained green dust down onto everything.”
The green dust, as many locals knew, contained arsenic.
A half-baked clean-up of the site in the following years included pouring sawdust over the mess, then returning another 10 years later to spread the chips around. By the time the Shafers moved from Edmonton to Faust in the 1970s, there was little evidence of the plant ever having existed. A chain-link fence around the site kept people out, and there were no visible signs of contamination. “We didn’t know about the explosion or even the existence of the plant, until long after we moved here,” said Shafer.
Tests for arsenic have since come up positive, so the presence of the compound is expected in this round of test results. But, say the REAC members, problems are being compounded by several factors.
“The Swan River Valley, running north from Kinuso toward Swan Hills, is considered the epicenter for this kind of environmental damage,” said Asterisk. The likely culprit, she thinks, is the nearby Swan Hills Treatment Centre for hazardous waste.
“There are a lot of rare cancers in the Kinuso area,” she says, likely attributable to what is being released into the air. And, says Asterisk, what gets in the air gets in the water. And, what gets in the water gets in the earth which gets in our food, and so on.
Samples are taken, including water and sludge from Old Man Creek, about 100 metres upstream of the lake, a nearby beaver hutch as well as the curious electric blue ricotta cheese-like substance. Tests will be made to determine the presence and level of arsenic, pesticides, pcbs, dioxins and furans and the particularly carcinogenic Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbon.
Control samples are gathered at both East and West Prairie River upstream of the highway and railroad tracks. The idea is to get far enough upwind of the Swan Valley drainage area, collect samples and compare the data collected at either end. Any discrepancy in the two, Asterisk believes, might be telling.
At the end of the day, 12 bottles are packed in a chilled cooler and rushed back to Slave Lake, where they are couriered overnight to a lab in Edmonton.
Results are expected in about three weeks.
Ironically, despite the effort, Asterisk hopes the tests all come back negative.
In the end, she says honestly, “We just want to know what’s in the water.”
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